Adèle Page 3

  She lay down. The shutters were open and she could see the crowds walking in the streets below. After a while, unable to sleep, she got out of bed. In the bathroom she splashed cold water on her face and inspected her reflection for a long time. She looked down at her belly and then back up at her face. She wondered if she would once again become what she had been before. She was acutely aware of her own metamorphosis. She couldn’t have said if this pleased her or if she was feeling nostalgic for the past. But she knew that something inside her was dying.

  She had always thought that a child would cure her. She had convinced herself that motherhood was the only way out of her malaise, the sole solution that could end this perpetual flight from herself. She had thrown herself into it like a cancer patient finally accepting the necessity of chemotherapy. She had made this child—or, rather, this child had been made without any resistance from her—in the mad hope that it would be good for her.

  No need for a pregnancy test. She knew straightaway, but she didn’t tell anyone. She guarded her secret jealously. Her belly grew and she kept halfheartedly denying that she was going to have a baby. She was afraid that the people around her would ruin everything with their banal reactions, their vulgar gestures, touching the underside of her belly to feel its roundness. She felt alone, particularly with men, but that solitude didn’t oppress her.

  Lucien was born. She quickly started smoking and drinking again. The child stole her idleness and for the first time in her life she was forced to look after someone else. She loved that child. She loved him with an intense, physical love, but still it wasn’t enough. Those days at home seemed endless. Sometimes she would let the baby cry in his crib while she covered her head with a pillow and tried to sleep. She would sob at the sight of the slimy, stained high chair, of this sad child who didn’t want to eat.

  She likes to hold his naked body tight against her before she puts him in his bath. She loves rocking him and watching him sink into sleep, drunk on her tenderness. Ever since his crib was swapped for a child’s bed, she has slept next to him. Each night she noiselessly leaves the conjugal bedroom and slides under the covers beside her son, who grunts and turns over. She rubs her nose in his hair, against his neck, in the palm of his hand, sniffing his sour smell. She wishes so much that this would be enough to fill her.

  Pregnancy ruined her. She has the impression that she came out of it ugly, soft, old. She cut her hair short and now her face seems to be riddled with lines. And yet, at thirty-five, Adèle is still a beautiful woman. Age has even rendered her stronger, more intriguing, more imperious. Her features have hardened but her pale gaze has grown more powerful. She is less hysterical, less excitable. Years of smoking have lowered the high-pitched voice that her father used to mock. Her pallor has become intense and you can almost trace the meanders of her veins now under her cheeks.

  They leave the hotel room. Richard leads Adèle out by the arm. For a few minutes they remain frozen behind the door, listening to Lucien’s howls as he begs them to come back. With a heavy heart they walk to the restaurant where Richard has reserved a table. Adèle had wanted to dress up but in the end she didn’t bother. She was cold when she came back from the beach. She didn’t feel like taking off her clothes, putting on the dress and the high-heeled shoes that she’d brought with her. It’s just the two of them, after all.

  They walk quickly along the street, side by side. They don’t touch. They rarely kiss. Their bodies have nothing to say to each other. They have never felt any attraction or even tenderness for each other, and in a way this absence of carnal complicity is reassuring. As if it proves that their union is above all bodily contingencies. As if they have already mourned the loss of something that other couples part with reluctantly, amid tears and rows.

  Adèle does not remember the last time she made love with her husband. Probably last summer. An afternoon. They have become used to all those arid nights when they wish each other sweet dreams and turn their backs. But still, a sense of embarrassment, a sourness, ends up disturbing the air around them. So Adèle feels a strange obligation to break this cycle, to offer her body to him once again so that they can then go on as they were before. For days on end she thinks about it as a sacrifice to which she must consent.

  Tonight the conditions are in place. Richard’s gaze is misty and a little bit ashamed. He’s more clumsy than usual. He pays Adèle a compliment about how beautiful she looks. She suggests they order a good bottle of wine.

  Over the first course Richard picks up the conversation where they left it at lunch. Between mouthfuls he reminds Adèle of the promises they made nine years ago when they got married. To enjoy Paris as long as their youth and their means allowed, then to move out when they had children. When Lucien was born Richard gave her a reprieve. “Two more years,” she said. Those two years elapsed long ago and this time he is not going to give in. Hasn’t she said dozens of times that she wants to quit her job, to devote herself to something else—writing, perhaps, her family? Haven’t they agreed that they’re tired of the metro, of traffic jams, of the high cost of living, of the whole damn rat race? Adèle says nothing. She barely touches her food. But Richard does not waver in the face of her indifference. He plays his last card.

  “I’d like another child. A little girl—wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  The alcohol has already stolen Adèle’s appetite; now she wants to vomit. She has the impression that her stomach has swollen, that it’s about to overflow. The only thing that could bring her relief is to lie down, not to move a muscle, to let sleep carry her away.

  “You can finish my food if you want. I’ve had enough.”

  She pushes her plate toward Richard.

  He orders a coffee. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” He accepts the Armagnac that the restaurant owner offers him on the house, and continues talking about children. Adèle is furious. The evening seems endless. If only he would change the subject . . .

  Richard is a little drunk. On the way back to the hotel he makes Adèle laugh by suddenly breaking into a run. They enter their hotel room on tiptoe. Richard pays the babysitter. Adèle sits on the bed and slowly takes off her shoes.

  * * *

  *

  He won’t dare.

  And yet he does.

  There’s no mistaking it. Always the exact same moves.

  He comes up behind her.

  The kiss on her neck.

  The hand on her hip.

  And then that murmur, that little moan, accompanied by a pleading sigh.

  She turns around, opens her mouth, and her husband sticks his tongue inside it.

  No foreplay.

  Let’s get it over with, she thinks as she undresses alone on her side of the bed.

  They get in bed again. Bodies pressed together. Kissing constantly, as if it’s real. She puts her hand on his waist, then on his penis. He penetrates her. She closes her eyes.

  She doesn’t know what Richard likes. What turns him on. She’s never known. There is no subtlety to their lovemaking. The years have not brought them closer, have not diminished the embarrassment. His movements are precise and mechanical. Straight to the point. She doesn’t dare try taking her time. She doesn’t dare ask. As if the frustration were so violent that she might end up strangling him.

  She makes no sound. It would be awful if she woke Lucien and he caught them in this grotesque dance. She puts her mouth to Richard’s ear and moans a little bit to salve her conscience.

  It’s over already.

  He gets dressed straightaway. Acts as if nothing happened. Turns on the television.

  He has never seemed to care about the solitude in which he abandons his wife. She felt nothing, nothing at all. She just heard the sounds they made, like a toilet plunger: torsos sticking, genitalia bumping.

  And then, a vast silence.

  Adèle’s friends are beautiful. She w
as never stupid enough to surround herself with women less pretty than she is. This way, she doesn’t have to worry about attracting unwanted attention. She met Lauren during a press trip in Africa. Adèle had just started at the paper and it was the first time she had accompanied a minister on an official tour. She was nervous. On the runway at Villacoublay, where a government airplane was waiting for them, she immediately noticed Lauren: six feet tall, backcombed platinum hair, face like an Egyptian cat. Lauren was already an experienced photographer, an African specialist who had been to every city on the continent and who lived alone in a studio apartment in Paris.

  There were seven of them on the plane. The minister, a guy without any real power but whose career had been dramatic enough—corruption allegations, political turnarounds, sex scandals—to make him an important person. A jaunty technical adviser, probably an alcoholic, always ready with a smutty anecdote. A discreet bodyguard. A very blond and very chatty press officer. A skinny, ugly, chain-smoking journalist, famed for his rigor and the prizes he’d won, who regularly wrote front-page stories for his daily newspaper.

  On the first night, in Bamako, she slept with the bodyguard. Drunk, and turned on by Adèle’s desire, he danced topless in the hotel nightclub, his Beretta stuck in his belt. On the second night, in Dakar, she sucked off the adviser to the French ambassador in the toilets after slipping away from a deathly dull cocktail party where French expatriates blissfully rubbed shoulders with the minister while devouring canapés.

  On the third night, on the terrace of the seaside hotel in Praia, she ordered a caipirinha and started joking around with the minister. She was about to suggest a midnight dip when Lauren sat next to her. “We should take some nice photos tomorrow—what do you think? It could help you with your article. Have you started it yet? Have you chosen an angle?” When Lauren asked her if she wanted to go up to her room to see a few photos, she thought they were going to sleep together. Adèle decided that she wouldn’t be the man: that she would let the photographer lick her pussy but she wouldn’t return the favor.

  Her breasts, maybe. Yes, she might touch her breasts: they looked soft and welcoming. She had no qualms about tasting those breasts. But Lauren did not get undressed. She didn’t show Adèle her photographs either. She lay on the bed and started talking. Adèle lay next to her and Lauren stroked her hair. With her head on the shoulder of this woman who was quickly becoming her friend, Adèle felt exhausted, completely empty. Before falling asleep, she suddenly sensed that Lauren had saved her from some calamity and she felt an immense gratitude toward her.

  * * *

  *

  Tonight Adèle is waiting on Boulevard Beaumarchais, outside the gallery where her friend’s photographs are being exhibited. She warned Lauren: “I’m not going inside until you get there.”

  She forced herself to attend. She would have preferred to stay at home, but she knows that Lauren is angry with her. They haven’t seen each other for weeks. Adèle has canceled several dinner dates at the last minute, she’s found excuses not to go out for a drink. Her guilty feelings are amplified by the fact that she has so often asked her friend to cover for her. She’s sent her texts in the middle of the night: “If Richard calls, don’t answer! He thinks I’m with you.” Lauren has never answered any of Richard’s calls, but Adèle knows she has become unhappy about playing this role.

  In reality Adèle has been avoiding her. The last time they saw each other, for Lauren’s birthday, she had decided to be on her best behavior, to be a perfect and generous friend. She helped her prepare the party. She took care of the music and even bought bottles of Lauren’s favorite champagne. At midnight Richard went home so that their babysitter wouldn’t have to stay too late.

  Adèle was bored. She roamed from group to group, abandoning conversations in the middle of a sentence, incapable of focusing on anything. She started laughing with a man in an elegant suit and asked him, eyes shining, to pour her a drink. He hesitated. He looked around nervously. She did not understand his embarrassment until his wife arrived, furious, and vulgarly announced: “Settle down, all right? This one’s married!” Adèle laughed mockingly and replied: “I’m married too. You have nothing to worry about.” She moved away, chilled and trembling. She smiled to cover up the emotion she felt at being attacked by that bitchy woman.

  She took refuge on the balcony, where Matthieu was smoking a cigarette. Matthieu was the great love of Lauren’s life. He’d been her lover for the past ten years, feeding her on illusions that she still believed—that one day he would marry her and they would have children together. Adèle told him about the incident with the jealous wife and he said he understood why other women were afraid of her. They stared into each other’s eyes. At two in the morning he helped her to put on her coat. He offered to drive her home and Lauren said, in a disappointed voice: “Oh yes, I forgot you were neighbors.”

  After driving a few yards, Matthieu parked in a street off Boulevard du Montparnasse and undressed her. “I always wanted to.” He grabbed Adèle by the hips and put his mouth between her legs.

  The next day Lauren called her. She asked if Matthieu had mentioned her, if he’d said why he didn’t want to spend the night at her place. “You were all he talked about,” Adèle replied. “You know perfectly well that he’s obsessed with you.”

  * * *

  *

  A wave of winter jackets spurts out of the Saint-Sébastien Froissart metro station. Woolly hats, lowered heads, department store bags swaying from the hands of mothers and grandmothers. In the trees the small discreet Christmas baubles look as if they’re freezing to death. Lauren waves. She is wearing a long white cashmere coat, soft and warm. “Come on, there are lots of people I want you to meet,” she says, dragging Adèle by the arm.

  The gallery consists of two adjoining rooms, both quite small, with a buffet hastily assembled between them: drinks in plastic cups, chips and peanuts on paper plates. The exhibition is devoted to Africa. Adèle barely even stops in front of the photographs of packed trains, dusty towns, laughing children, and dignified old people. She likes Lauren’s pictures, taken in the scrublands of Abidjan and Libreville, of couples embracing, covered with sweat, drunk on dancing and banana beer. Men in short-sleeved shirts, khaki or pale yellow, hold the hands of voluptuous girls with long braided hair.

  Lauren is busy. Adèle drinks two cups of champagne. She is restless. She has the feeling that everyone is staring at her because she’s alone. She takes her phone from her pocket and pretends to send a text. When Lauren calls out her name, she shakes her head and shows her the cigarette that she’s holding between gloved fingers. She doesn’t feel like answering questions about what she does for a living. She is bored at the mere thought of all these penniless artists, these journalists pretending to be poor, these bloggers who have opinions about everything. The idea of making conversation is unbearable. Just being there, tasting the night, losing herself in banalities. Going home.

  Outside, a damp and ice-cold wind burns her face. The weather probably explains why there’s only one other smoker out there on the sidewalk: a short man with reassuringly broad shoulders. His narrow gray eyes meet Adèle’s. She stares at him confidently, without lowering her gaze. Adèle swallows a mouthful of champagne and her tongue feels dry. They drink and they talk. A conversation about nothing very much, full of knowing smiles and easy insinuations. The best kind of conversation. He pays her compliments, she laughs softly. He asks for her name, she refuses to tell him, and this gentle, banal mating dance makes her feel alive again.

  All their words are mere preliminaries for this moment, now, in this deserted back alley, where Adèle is pressed against a green Dumpster. He’s ripped her tights. She lets out little moans, throws her head backward. He slides his fingers inside her, rubs his thumb on her clitoris. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to meet the gaze of any passersby. She grabs the man’s soft, slender fist and shoves it into her.
He starts to moan too, abandoning himself to the unexpected desire of an unknown woman, one Thursday night in December. Excited, he wants more. He bites her neck, pulls her toward him, and starts to unzip his fly. His hair is messed up and his eyes are wide now. He looks like one of those starving men in the gallery’s photographs.

  She steps back, smooths down her skirt. He pats down his hair and collects himself. He tells her he lives close by—“near Rue de Rivoli.” She can’t. “That was good, thanks.”

  Adèle walks back to the gallery. She is afraid that Lauren has already left, afraid of having to go home alone. She spots the white coat.

  “Ah, there you are.”

  “Lauren, walk me home. You know it scares me. You don’t mind walking on your own at night. You’re not afraid of anything.”

  “Come on, then. Give me your cigarette.”

  They walk, clinging together, along Boulevard Beaumarchais.

  “Why didn’t you go with him?” Lauren asks.

  “I have to go home. Richard’s expecting me. I told him I wouldn’t be late. No, I don’t want to go that way,” she says abruptly as they arrive at Place de la République. “There are rats in the bushes. Rats as big as little dogs. I’m serious!”

  They stick to the Grands Boulevards. The night sky darkens and Adèle grows nervous. Alcohol makes her paranoid. All the men are staring at them. Outside a kebab shop three men yell out “Hey, girls!” and make her jump. Gangs of men surge from nightclubs and an Irish pub, staggering, laughing, with an edge of aggression. Adèle is frightened. She wishes she were in bed with Richard. The doors and windows closed. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her, he would defend her. She walks faster, pulling Lauren by the arm. She wants to get home as fast as possible, to be at Richard’s bedside, in the warm calm of his gaze. Tomorrow she will make dinner. She’ll clean the house, she’ll buy flowers. She’ll drink wine with him and tell him about her day. She’ll make plans for the weekend. She will be conciliatory, gentle, servile. She’ll say yes to everything.